Patent Reformers O'Reilly, Bezos Mum on 1-Click 48
theodp writes "Brought together 7 years ago by a threatened boycott over Amazon's 1-Click patent, Tim O'Reilly and Jeff Bezos vowed to reform the U.S. patent system. So in The Register's Open Season podcast (@12:25), Andrew Orlowski finds it very ironic that news of a victory by LOTR choreographer Peter Calveley against Bezos' 1-Click patent broke as O'Reilly was once again busy trotting out Amazon-tied speakers to headline a Web 2.0 conference, this one sponsored by Fenwick & West, the prestigious law firm bested by Calveley. Orlowski notes that O'Reilly, who now counts Bezos among his investors, was oddly silent for a self-described software patent protester, especially one who once vowed to torpedo 1-Click. Equally untalkative was Bezos, who deflected questions on the damage done by Calveley's DIY legal effort, telling a Wall Street analyst to 'refer to our public filings' (although nothing on the subject appears in the 8-K and 10-Q filings). One last dose of irony — in explaining the prior art he used to reject the 1-Click claims, a USPTO Examiner cited the very same TV remote control patent that was deemed to be unsuitable in a 1-Click prior art contest run by the O'Reilly and Bezos-bankrolled BountyQuest (just last year, Amazon testified to Congress that the contest failed to find prior art for Bezos' patent)."
Money! It's a gas! (Score:3, Insightful)
Next question (Score:1, Interesting)
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Nobody in the pro-IP camp is prepared to accept any liability, or even responsibility for the costs of the system.
A first step towards a saner patent system would be to simply recognize patents as delegated taxation rights, and require any patent derived revenues to be accounted for as a separate post within the government budget. Then we'd get the actual cost of the system on paper, and we could get an actual discussion of wether we're getting our money's
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just don't buy from them (Score:5, Insightful)
Good thing is: you don't have to buy from them. There are plenty of alternatives to both Amazon and O'Reilly, run by people that don't have such a cloud hanging over them.
No problem. (Score:2, Interesting)
O'Reilly isn't a problem for me. I've been moving into FOSS web development and I'm finding that O'Reilly's books aren't what they used to be. They used to be a great value, concise, full of information, and plenty of examples that made sense - like the Perl books - most of them, anyway.
Now, they're verbose, hard to follow, the authors go off on tangents, the editions come out too infrequently, and they are no longer a good value. The "coo
Re:No problem. (Score:4, Informative)
I also think No Starch Press [nostarch.com] makes some good books.
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Re:No problem. (Score:4, Informative)
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Amazon doesn't intentionally delay your order, but the potential delay is documented [amazon.com]. The delay occurs when you order items that come from different fulfillment centers. Amazon aggregates the items by trucking them to a single FC, then ships them to you. (This was explained to me by a co-worker when I w
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Maybe they weren't all in-stock at the same time? It seems odd to do this, especially if they were all under $25, as the shipping costs might exceed the already slim margins. Amazon has a large and complex system that works differently in different cases. My post was meant to give a possible explanation, not to say it always works that way.
Everyone I met at Amazon was smart and wanted to do a good j
I don't think so. (Score:1)
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I abuse the program for my convenience, buying $4 trinkets or $6 paperbacks and having them appear in my driveway 36 hours later. Of course, I also buy $40 routers and $60 books on occasion.
I wonder if there is a
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Sure, any book must be taken with a grain of salt (you have the net to fill your mill for grains of salt) but I've never been disappointed by my purchases from them. "The Art of SQL", for instance, is a gem. And I don't know of any alternatives for such a book.
OK, maybe some influential people there can be "bought" (case in point here), but they do know how to pinpoint good authors and ma
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"who now counts Bezos among his investors" (Score:3, Interesting)
Money and common sense (and/or ethics) just seem to be strangely opposed... Why am I (not) surprised?
Retracting your common sense/ethics arguments because you find yourself in "debt" to money-makers just looks cheap, doesn't it?
The patent system needs reform (Score:3, Insightful)
Given the above, many patents obstruct progress instead of encouraging it. They generate business for lawyers who get paid always by the hour and not on contingency. I think the legal abuse of intellectual property law is more costly than tort abuse.
Patents and copyrights should be used for their Constitutional purpose, and not to provide monopoly rents to entities that can afford the costs to protect them.
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You must be new here. (Said in a quiet, defeated voice...)
what? (Score:5, Insightful)
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That was the first thing that came to mind after about 3 lines. "Why are there so many commas and parentheses (sp?) and not more periods?" Damn block of text reads like a legal filing to a layman.
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knee high to a Wikipedian (Score:2)
Orlowski also maintains a minor vendetta against Wikipedia, or more specifically, Wikipedians, and slams the unreliable nature of Wikipedia while writing for The Inquirer, the great mothership of all things unsourced.
The Inquirer seems to hold a grudge over the persistent deletion from Wikipedia of the Everywhere Girl, an exercise from the outset in fanning nothing into nothing very much, and then congratulating themselves for this amazing and notable feat, in much the way that Paris is famous for being fam
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Although I've noticed that for the last year or so, I haven't known what about 80% of the stories were talking about. But then again, I have a job, and a girlfriend...
Well now that it is becomming clear that there are (Score:2)
And that is that software patents are acts of fraud against the public.
Software is not of the nature of patent quality, it is of the matter of physical phenomenon, natural law and abstract ideas, as well as sub-subject matter such as mathematical algorithms and the likes.... all of which are universally recognized as non-patentable subject matter. Simply because such
I agree (Score:2)
Software is pure mathematical expression. As such, I can understand copyrighting specific implementations of ideas in software, but not the patenting of algorithms. The latter is a serious attack on intellectual freedom; Its privatizing math!
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Mechanical devices are pure physics applications. For that matter, electric circuits and chemicals such as pharmaceutical products are all grounded in pure physics. Should a patent for a mechanical devices, electric circuit, or drug be invalid because it "privatizes
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For that matter, electric circuits and chemicals such as pharmaceutical products are all grounded in pure physics. Should a patent for a mechanical devices, electric circuit, or drug be invalid because it "privatizes physics?"
They are not grounded in pure physics because the applications cannot be extrapolated from pure theory. That is why engineers get a somewhat different education than physicists: The former are more concerned with established techniques and standards that embody real world experience formed largely without a preoccupation with theory. And I should think that any physics researcher could tell you that, given that much of what they do in pursuing a workable and patentable application of their ideas is honing
Mum? (Score:1)
Eben is right (Score:1)
Even more ironic... (Score:1)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/27/amazon_1_click_patent_interview/ [theregister.co.uk]
How the hell is Bezos a "patent reformer"? (Score:2)
If Bezos is a patent reformer, the RIAA is a copyright reformer.
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So Bezos could very well be a copyright reformer, but his reform might not be what you expect when you here the term 'copyright-reform'.